Embedded systems have significantly increased in technical complexity towards open, interconnected systems. This has exacerbated the problem of ensuring dependability in the presence of human, environmental and technological risks. The rise of complex Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) has led to many initiatives to promote reuse and automation of labor-intensive activities. Two large-scale projects are OPENCOSS and SafeCer, which dealt with assurance and certification of software-intensive critical systems using incremental and model-based approaches. OPENCOSS defined a Common Certification Language (CCL), unifying concepts from different industries to build a harmonized approach to reduce time and cost overheads, via facilitating the reuse of certification assets. SafeCer developed safety-oriented process lines, a component model, contract-based verification techniques, and process/product-based model-driven safety certification for compositional development and certification of CPSs.
AMASS will create and consolidate a de-facto European-wide assurance and certification open tool platform, ecosystem and self-sustainable community spanning the largest CPS vertical markets. We will start by combining and evolving the OPENCOSS and SafeCer technological solutions towards end-user validated tools, and will enhance and perform further research into new areas not covered by those projects. The ultimate aim is to lower certification costs in face of rapidly changing product features and market needs. This will be achieved by establishing a novel holistic and reuse-oriented approach for architecture-driven assurance (fully compatible with standards e.g. AUTOSAR and IMA), multi-concern assurance (compliance demonstration, impact analyses, and compositional assurance of security and safety aspects), and for seamless interoperability between assurance/certification and engineering activities along with third-party activities (external assessments, supplier assurance).